Vena Amoris
by YellowFlicker
Summary: He's breathing fast, shaking against her. She feels fluttery on the inside too, all hot liquid and frail skin holding it together, but the way her hands kept contact with him, skimming up his shoulders, his face, his hair, that is instinctual. He put himself in her hands trusting her to keep him safe, and safe is where she'll keep him.


An: I'm yellowflicker09011996 over at tumblr; come talk to me anytime ;)

* * *

I _n a field. With the moon.  
And the dark. And the dirt._  
 _With your mouth. And just one word:_  
 _god god god._

 _—_ _ **Daphne Gottlieb,**_ _from "how you talk," 15 Ways to Stay Alive_

He's breathing fast, shaking against her. Felicity holds on until he can take a deep breath that won't break on the way out. She feels fluttery on the inside too, all hot liquid and frail skin holding it together, but the way her hands keep contact with him, skimming up his shoulders, his face, his hair, that is instinctual. She took him as high as he could go and that was an experience unlike any other, but taking care of him now is as important as being careful and responsible with him before: she needs to bring him down gently. As softly as the soothing lap of a wave over a white shore without ever disturbing the sand.

He put himself in her hands trusting her to keep him safe, and safe is where she'll keep him[1].

She touches him to let him know without words that he's safe, to remind him she's still right there with him, her hands as gentle as she can make them. He is completely defenseless now and completely hers, but she might as well be touching raw nerve for how sensitive he is.

Felicity brushes her fingers along his cheek, tells him in a whisper to keep his eye closed a little longer, take his time to get used to the light as she lifts his blindfold.

He does as he's told. She knew he would.

She skims her fingers down his arm and he hums. Goosepumps rise up to chase her touch, calling up shivers.

He is so still now, so limp and relaxed against the thick cover of their bed. Felicity threads her fingers through his hair. Oliver groans, turns his face to her hand when she cups his cheek. His breaths were evening out, settling. His pulse is still fast and she knows that it will take him at least 20 minutes to ride the adrenaline out of his system before he can enjoy the high of the endorphins, but he looks peaceful enough that if she didn't know better, Felicity would have thought him asleep.

She _does_ know better though.

Felicity leans in, brushes her cheek against his as her hand settles on his shoulder.

'I need you to sit up now, baby.' With her lips close to his ear that he can feel her warm breath on it. She can feel his shudder as it rips through him.

He nods minutely and the tries to sit up. She helps him up on his knees, holding the back of his neck when his head slumps forward to rest on her bare shoulder for a moment. The single thread that had been holding her together, pulls, and all the tenderness inside her overflows until it spills out and around the both of them, overwhelming and guiding her every thought at the same time. She turns her head, kisses his cheek. Reaches carefully for the bottle of water she'd placed on the nightstand before, for exactly this moment. Oliver takes three long pulls from the straw before he blinks his eyes slowly open.

He looks blissed out, eyes heavy-lidded and glassy, every muscle of his body loose with it. Looking at him like this make her vibrate like a struck bell, the heat of satisfaction warming her bones, tightening the muscles of her abdomen and her things and as it liquefies somewhere in between.

 _Later_.

'I'm going to untie you now, Oliver.'

He blinks once, slow, lets out a long breath and nods weakly. Felicity keeps one hand on his shoulder as she moves around to undo the ropes that she'd tied his forearms with behind his back. It's slow work: she's at her most careful as she unwraps the binds, exposing the imprints the rope had left on his skin. She catches him with both arms around his torso when he slumps back the moment the ropes around his shoulders and chest come loose.

'Shhh, it's ok. You're you, I've got you, baby.' Felicity wraps a blanket around his shoulders, presses herself close to his back, one hand directly over his heart. He's still running hot, her fingers slip on his sweaty skin, but he's going to start shivering at any moment now.

'Come on.' She urges him up. The way he stumbles on his feet as he walks is the closest Felicity would ever come to seeing Oliver drunk, probably. She balks a little when he leans on her. It's always a surprise how heavy he is, no matter how familiar she is with the feel and weight of him.

The bathroom is dimmer than their bedroom, only a few candles illuminating it once Felicity closes the door behind them. It's baking hot in there, because that's the way Oliver likes it, it helps him relax. The roll of heat makes Felicity's toes curl in as it settles over her like a heady embrace. Felicity helps Oliver sit down on the wide edge of the tub and as the bath fills, and then steps behind him, works her hands against the muscles of his shoulders, loosening the numbness immobility had certainly left him with, telling him how good he is and how well he did. There are fine tremors still running through him and every once in a while he'll start tensing, so she traces her fingers between his shoulder-blades, up his neck, frames his face as she steps in front of him.

'Relax.' She reminds him, her voice as soft as it's firm. Felicity takes her own deep breath, slow and steady in and out, and he does the same, mirroring her. His shoulders drop, his forehead comes forward to rest on her breastbone.

The water is just on the cautious side of too-warm when Felicity urges Oliver into the tub and goes in after him, but she's used to it. She sits high on his lap, her thighs framing his, the water lapping at her waist. Hot showers and, more rarely, hot baths are one of the few things Oliver likes indulging in. Just hot water in general. ( _It really hadn't taken her too long to know why – she has excellent imagination_.) Oliver settles into the water, his head laid on the edge, cushioned on a towel.

Felicity uses her own body-wash to clean the both of them up. He likes it better that way, familiar scents to ground him into the moment. To her.

She presses her hand over his heart from time to time, to feel his heartbeat. It's still a bit faster than normal, but Oliver seems mostly relaxed through it. Mostly. When he jerks, his whole body tensing as if he'd been on the edge of sleep and dreamt of falling, Felicity is a bit startled, but not much. The way he sits up and wraps his hands around both her arms to hold her in place ( _hold himself to the only steadiness he can perceive in that moment_ ), doesn't surprise her either.

She keeps her voice even, steady. 'It's alright.' Keeps touching him, one hand over his flying heart, the other on his cheek. 'You're okay. This is _okay_. Breathe.'

He does, blinking rapidly as if he can't quite see her well. That happens too. The last of the adrenaline in his system is burning off and the endorphins are relaxing his optical nerve. She remembers the words she'd read immediately, but what they mean to her is that Oliver is scared and she needs to bring him out of it.

She knows what to do though. When he can't trust one of his senses, then she'll help him take it out of the equation and trust the others. Trust _her_.

'Close your eyes, hon.'

He does. He's breathing fast and holding on tight, but he does, and Felicity feels her heart tightening with the weight of that gifted trust. She's never not aware of it, and thanks him by leaning close, pressing her cheek to his, tightens her thighs around his hips to make him feel her holding him firm.

'I'm right here. You can feel me.' They're chest to chest when she takes one of his hands in hers and cradles them between their bodies. 'You're not falling, you're not going anywhere.'

His head is probably spinning, making him feel weightless. She knows the feeling. She'd felt it too – he'd given it to her. That incomparable rush that was looking at him with his head thrown back and eyes closed; of being able to take him to a place where he could let everything go and just _receive_ , and staying with him there until she made him sob with pleasure and forget everything but what he was feeling. What she was making him feel.

Yes, Felicity knows the feeling… ( _Even now a soft shiver climbs her spine and thrills every nerve on her skin at the memory of it_.)

'Just let go, it's okay.'

Oliver exhales a long breath. Felicity threads her fingers through his hair again and feels him loosening with her every word. She takes a loose grip of his hair then and with gentle pressure, pushes him so that he can lay it on the towel at the edge of the tub again. Oliver goes willingly, and takes her with him, still not having let go. It takes him long moments, but the next time he opens his eyes to look at her, Felicity knows he's actually seeing her. He slides his hands down her arms, her ribs and waist, rests them on her hipbones where his thumb traces them back and forth. Every line of his body and the hazy, drugged look in his eyes tells her that he's at ease.

 _She_ gave him that.

It makes Felicity smile. 'Hey.'

The way his lips curve up, the way he watches her from under his lashes and heavy lids, is so _soft_ that it makes her heart flutter and ache in the best way, warmth blooming in her chest, loosening her limbs.

'Hi.'

She watches him carefully, trying to get a read on him, on what he might need, but he's just looking at her and smiling. She can read his contentment in every line of his body, from the rare peaceful look on his face to the low line of his shoulders and how his fingers are so lazy against her skin, beneath the surface of the water.

Felicity leans back, pulls the stopper and lifts herself off the water. Oliver's eyes follow the drops rolling down her skin. When she holds out her hand he takes it, and Oliver lifts himself up too. She wraps his favorite bathrobe around him, a huge fluffy thing that Felicity always like to cuddle into, and lets him dry the extra water from her hair when he reaches for the towel. He's so gentle she barely feels it.

When they're in their room again, Felicity hands him a tall glass of strawberry and lemon juice and half a bar of chocolate. He's rung out, so spent that his eyes are barely even open, but she'd rather err on the side of caution. She pushes aside the safety blanket she'd draped on the bed earlier and helps him get beneath the covers. He's flushed and looks about halfway asleep already, but doesn't close his eyes until she's in bed next to him. Felicity reaches out, brushes the tips of her fingers against his temple, to the impossibly soft skin under his eyes. His eyes slip shut, the long lashes she's always envied fluttering against her fingers.

'Sleep.'

After he wraps his one arm around her to pull her closer, he does.

x

Oliver wakes up slowly. There's no urgency; no dreams chasing him on the way up to conscious thought, no worries pressing against the back of his head the moment he gets there. There's just warmth. Warmth and a pair of lips he knows making their way from the back of his neck to his ear.

Time to wake up. He knows it before she says it.

Thought he doesn't really know what time it is exactly, the drapes are still firmly shut.

It's 6 pm Felicity tells him, before he's even asked. Just enough time to have dinner, get ready and show up at the benefit that had been the organizational bane of Oliver's existence ever since the decision was made by the City Council to host it.

Thinking about it now though, he doesn't feel the sense of dread that had become his constant companion these past few weeks. Maybe it's because it's almost over, or maybe because he feels so relaxed that for a moment he seriously considers his bones might have liquefied. It doesn't matter.

'How are you feeling?'

Oliver turns around so that they're side by side, takes a careful look at her face, shiny eyes and rosy lips, hair dried into a mess of curls all around her head. She's in one of her tank tops and a pair of pink boyshorts. He knows those; they have 'sweet' printed out in the back and Oliver has always found that word stretched out over her ass very appropriate.

So he kisses her by way of answering. Kisses her slow and with intent, trying to show her how he feels, because he has no words for it. She kisses back as if he understands every unspoken words and it crosses his mind right then that they need no language but their own. That this too is a shade of love, and it means what love has always meant to him: her name, safe behind his lips, in his hands, between their bodies.

Felicity goes downstairs to set the table for dinner, Oliver cleans up their room, putting everything back into place as meticulously as Felicity has arranged it for him. When he got her text that morning he hadn't been able to think about anything else but her. It had been a wonder he made it around people until noon. When he got home and saw everything she'd prepared for him, he'd understood she'd been planning this for a while.

When he goes downstairs her hair is in a bun at the top of her head and the table is set. He watches her move around, watches her glasses slip a little down her nose as she sets down the bowl of salad. She scrunches up her nose, pushes them back up with the back of her index finger. Oliver can't help the smile he gets when he recalls how she groans in irritation whenever her finger slips and touches the glass. When she sees him smiling she smiles back, and leans in to kiss him. It's supposed to be soft, fleeting. It's not.

They eat side by side, half turned towards each other and Oliver knows that the way her foot slides up and down the back of his calf every once in a while is deliberate. That Felicity knows he needs contact, needs to touch and be touched always, but most especially after a scene, when he still feels like floating and she's the only anchor he knows. He feels needy sometimes, as if he's asking too much, but then he dismisses the thought of it. He trusts Felicity and in the cradle of that trust there is the safety of knowing she would tell him if there ever came a point close to 'too much'. He's trusted her that way long before she said 'yes' to running away and leaving everything behind.

They've kept saying 'yes' to each other since then though, and in the strangest ways. Even sometimes just by standing there, ready to give the other what they thought would be scary, and holding it in their palms anyway[2].

He eats everything on his plate and watches Felicity clean out her own. She asks him about the scene, what he liked, if there was anything he didn't, anything he'd like to do again. If he wants something again in the same way, or differently. They talk about everything, go over everything. Because Felicity likes to know things, likes to be prepared, especially when it comes to him. They clean out the table together and when the moment he has his hands free, Oliver kisses her again, this time to say thank you. He says it words too, softly against her lips with his hands cupped around her face. But words cannot tell her how 'thankful' feels inside him. It cannot describe the subtle nuances of relief and the way calmness makes every voice inside his head quieter, how it makes the world at the edges of his vision softer. How it tugs at every string of his emotions and ties them all back to her, where every movement she does pulls him with her.

He doesn't have words to say those things, but that kiss might, because after all, they only ever needed their own language.

Later in his room, he puts on the tuxedo that she'd picked for him, tries to do something decent with his hair as by his side, Felicity brushes and tames her curls into softer waves with a hot iron. As he stands there in the bathroom with her, the cuffs of his shirts still undone, he brings catches a whiff of her scent on his skin. He brings his wrist to his nose and smells the citrusy scent of her bodywash on him. It makes him seriously consider not wearing anything else of his to cover up that scent.

Felicity laughs at the thought of half the politicians of the state meeting Mayor Oliver Queen while he smells like his girlfriend. Oliver can't really see the problem even as he grabs his aftershave, but he'd never object to her laughing. ( _he'd bottle the sound of it up and get drunk on it every night, if he could_ [3])

He gets ready quicker than she does, maybe a bit intentionally. He wants to watch her move around a room that is theirs and smells like her as she puts herself together piece by piece. He wants to watch her transform. It's something of a favorite pastime. He likes that he _can_ , and the feeling will apparently never go away. It only ever highlights how intimate it feels to see her like this, even though he doesn't understand every secret behind her choices. He doesn't want to. He just wants to be there watching them happen.

He's very silent in the corner as she slips into black lace and pulls stockings up her legs, fixes her garter. The room expands, quieting just as his focus sharpens and Felicity is the gravity point of it all. She moves and he moves, as if she pulls her. He watches her in front of the mirror, carefully applying her makeup, leaning towards the glass. Felicity and her reflection, like two different women meeting out of time, wearing the exact same shade of lipstick.

She walks to him, her eyes aware and smiling and drapes his bowtie over his shoulder, fingers skimming down his chest and abdomen as she moves beyond him, to her dress. His muscles twitch where she touches him, his body follows her, turning towards her, watching her go. Watching the round shoulders and the dip of her back, the swell of her ass. This is his favorite kind of wanting. There are many kinds and almost all of them converge in the way looking at Felicity always feels like waking up, but this… there is no disruption in this, right then. It's desire and it's even, smoothed out as the surface of a deep deep lake ( _or maybe so is he_ ). It's a kind of wanting seeps into every moment without disrupting anything, slow and deep-staining, ever since he opened his eyes. It's wanting like breathing.

Felicity walks out of the closet in a floor length red dress, her eyes alight and cheeks flushed. He wants to kiss the red right off his lips, he has a feeling she wants to stain him with that lipstick all over just as much. ( _some days he knows how she wants to be touched just from the shade she's wearing_ ) She turns for him to zip it up her back. Oliver is aware of everything, the warmth of her skin, the heady scent of her neck and the smooth silk beneath his hands. He's awake and floating, both, an almost dreamlike state. When she moves out of his hands with a mischievous smile, Oliver knows she wants to keep him there.

They walk out and into the back seat of their car and throughout their whole ride, as Felicity smiles and takes his hand, touches his thigh, he wonders ' _what do you need_ ', ' _what can I give you',_ ' _how_ '.

They enter the gala, meet people, smile and talk, and all the while she's there at the back of his mind. He watches her as if she's going to tell him the answers and Felicity looks at him and bites her lip from the other corner of the room.

Maybe she will. Maybe he'll have to work for it.

He puts the wine glass he'd been holding down, fiddles with his cufflinks, straightens his jacket as he takes a deep breath through his nose to calm down.

The whole night passes in a blur. He meets many people that he's been wanting to for a long time and charms his way through them with sincere intent. Makes connections. There had been a reason why this thing had stressed him out so much, but now Oliver hardly remembers it. He's calm through it, sure. And always aware of where in the room Felicity is, what she's doing, where her hands are, if she's looking at him.

He dances with her twice. Two slow songs, a laugh in the face of the Oliver Queen who didn't dance.

But when it's finally over and they get back to the car that will take them home, the whole evening becomes a collective of moments spent with other people and not Felicity, apart and not together. Moments between them leaving the loft and finally getting back. And yes, the gala was the completion of weeks of work - Oliver _is_ walking two inches off the ground because it was a complete success. But it also feels like an interruption.

He opens the door for her, watches her set her purse down as he closes it softly.

'Don't turn on the lights.'

It's soft, but Oliver hears it as if she's whispered it in his ear. And no matter how familiar it is, he's still not prepared for the rush of sensation that comes with her tone. His breathing deepens, evens out, even as his heart starts beating a bit faster.

She walks further in, up the stairs slowly and he as he follows at her same pace, he knows she will like it slow this time. He can tell just by her step. But then her hands come around to the back of her dress as unzip it, letting it fall down on the stairs as she keeps climbing them without pause… and suddenly Oliver is not so sure.

The thrill is a rope that pulls righter around him, winding him up and keeping him together at the same time.

He wants to rush but he doesn't. He picks up her dress instead, the warmth of her body still clinging to the watery fabric. He picks up a discarded black heel a few steps up, and the other one just by the door of their room.

She's leaning against her work table, the single lamp behind her highlighting her silhouette against the dark. When he sees her there, Oliver understands that the chair is for him to sit on. He's proven right when she steps between his open knees the moment he's seated.

Her hands slip beneath his jacket and Oliver lets her take it off him. She's more careful with it than she was with her dress: she drapes it on the back of the chair, her lace-cupped breasts so close he could just turn his head to kiss the soft swell of one.

'The garter stays.' She tells him softly as she undoes his bowtie and slips the first button of his shirt undone. 'The panties go.'

So Oliver does just that, undoing the bows of her garter ever so slow and slipping her panties down her legs, tracing the back of her thighs and the curve of her ass as he ties the stockings back up.

Instead of slipping on his lap like he'd thought she would though, Felicity hops on the desk again and looks at him for a moment. Oliver holds her eye, waiting.

 _What do you want? Tell me. Anything… anything…_

There's a smile she's hiding, right there at the corner of her lips. Her eyes are soft, calm.

One foot traces its way up his leg and comes to rest on his knee. Oliver wraps one hand around her ankle to keep her there, his thumb tracing the shape of her toes, overcome with a tenderness that punches him in the chest out of nowhere, before he digs his fingers firmly up the arch of her foot. She loves wearing those heels, but they hurt.

Felicity closes her eyes and sighs deeply, her head lolling on her shoulder. He's been half hard because of her for the better part of the night and the way she's spoken before coupled with seeing her drop that dress like it was an afterthought had taken him the rest of the way, but it's that contented sigh she gives him that makes Oliver's mouth go dry.

He's been trying to find a single word that describes ' _I thought never would, but for you I did._ _ **[4]**_ ' ever since she got into the car with him earlier, leaving the gala. It's the closest to a name that his feelings in that moment would get, but there is no such word. There is only what she wants, and that is the beginning and the end of him in that moment.

What she wants ends up being on the bed, with him on his knees between her open legs ( _on his knees is how he likes to give thanks, often and well_ ), with Felicity looking up at him. She tilts her head and he starts unbuttoning his shirt. Her eyes are intent on his fingers, so he makes it slow as one foot traces up and down his thigh and every time closer to where his cock is straining against his slack, which will have to wait. Wait as long as it has to, because he has to kiss her thigh where it's covered by her stocking ( _inky-dark, pupils blow wide with want he wants to drown in_ ) and a bit higher where it's not, ( _her bottom lip trapped against her teeth_ ) and higher still, where she's wet. And that is where he stays until he's made her arch off the bed twice. Until she has both her hands through his hair to keep him there, and a little more, the way she likes it, until her thighs are shaking.

He glances up her body as she arches of the bed, loud, obscene and unashamed, the closes to holy Oliver will ever set his eyes on. That's it, that's her. She's the taste of scripture.

She pushes him away and curls to her side hands between her legs as she shakes, whimpering out the last tremors of her pleasure. He can't help but touch her. Can't resist, not after the way her shallow breaths turn to hums when she feels him. She turns and opens her arms for him again. She wants to hold him and to be held, and there is nothing better than giving her that too. To be held by light is all he's ever wanted after all, in a body that remembers his body.

He wants to give – everything, all of it, whatever he has left. Tonight is that kind of night, where he feels his beginning and end and every breath in between will exist for her satisfaction. It's with hands that shake of that stainless devotion that he touches her again. She looks at him and she _knows_ \- the same way she's always known. And it's with hands made rough through years of digging up his words that she lets him in.

His whole body has become one exposed nerve, aching to touch her. Everything else between her skin and his gets lost, ripped away by both their frantic hands, shaking of a need that came from nowhere, passing from him to her through their kisses. They're full to the brim with each other, it almost hurts when they come together, pleasure slicing though they're barely moving. He can't breathe so he searches for his breath in her neck, on her shoulder and her lips, forgets himself in her arms, kissing her jawline and her collarbones, moving slow and pressing deep until she throws her head back and sobs with the feel of it.

He's lost to the sight of her, lost on her lips and between her legs, lost when she flips them around and sets her own rhythm. Slow still, her hands catching his hands, holding them above his head and pressing down, fingers threading together the same way she threads him apart with every movement. Her breaths fans warm on his face, lips so close enough to brush with his, sparking sensation that he feels all the way to where he's inside her. They've both forgotten how to kiss. He thinks he's forgotten how to breathe, and if it were not for how his voice mixes with hers, he'd believe it too.

But he hasn't forgotten. He has a body and it's with her body, the best place it could ever be. Anywhere, any place at any time, it would always be like this, in the dark with her mouth on his mouth and one word, her name, echoing in his head, _Felicity, Felicity, Felicity_ , the closes thing to a prayer he might believe. Until their bodies coil and evaporate, until they thread apart and lick themselves off the ceiling ( _each other's skin_ ), earth and gravity forgotten. Until the world focuses where they touch and they both break time, the smash echoing as loud as a hitched breath and two eyes finding each other in the dark.

The silence that comes after is of the kind that presses down, pushing their sweaty bodies against each other harder. She's loose and heavy on top of him, like a living blanket. He holds her tighter, feels his head spin as he feels her catch her breath against his neck. He pushes her sweaty hair away from her face, turns his head and kisses her cheek, as softly as he might her lips, her hands. Traces his hands up her arms, down her spine and she stretches over him, content smiling, and Oliver feels himself fall even deeper into whatever it was that kept him so warm. If he sees small lights at the edges of his vision he doesn't worry; he turns them around, slow. Side by side in the dark and in the quiet, breathing together. So many times before, they'd fallen, wounded, on the places that were meant for revelation[5]… but not this. Not here.

Here is where they stay tender. And warm, with a blanket thrown over them, eyes already heavy with sleep and the best kind of exhaustion. And together

* * *

[1] From Lord of the rings – Treebeard says this to the Merry and Pippin.

[2] Kelli Russell, from Hourglass Museum; "Self-Portrait with Reader"

[3] Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

[4] Via

[5] \- Alejandra Pizarnik, from "Paths of the Mirror,"


End file.
